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Brian W.
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| Posted: 08 January 2008 at 5:17am | IP Logged
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Tommy James (yes, that Tommy James) is going to be writing a monthly column for Cash Box online. His debut column details the singles market from his perspective, from when he first hit it big in 1966, what happened to the singles market, and how it came back. He thinks the current singles-driven market is a good thing.
Tommy James article
I won't mention how laughably bizarre Cash Box's current charts are, but...
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Hykker
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| Posted: 08 January 2008 at 5:42am | IP Logged
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I didn't even know Cashbox still existed. Some of his facts were a bit off though.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in late 1967 and opened the floodgates to a new era in the rock and roll industry.
Actually, Sgt. Pepper was released in June. Hardly "late" '67.
'll never forget going out on the Hubert Humphrey Presidential Campaign in August of 1968. When we left New York, the voices on the radio were 'The Rascals," "The Association," "The Turtles," "Gary Puckett," and "Tommy James and the Shondells." When we got back ninety days later, It was "Crosby, Stills, and Nash," "Led Zeppelin," "Blood, Sweat, and Tears," "Joe Cocker," and "Neil Young." All album acts.
While music certainly did change in 1968, it was hardly that dramatic. CS & N's first album didn't come out until mid-1969, and Led Zep didn't really hit the radio until late '69. I don't know what station(s) he was listening to, but there was still plenty of pop music on the air. It would be a couple of years before the "free-form" FM rock stations had much of an impact.
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AndrewChouffi
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| Posted: 08 January 2008 at 7:45am | IP Logged
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My take on the article is more a version of "poetic license".
I really don't think everthing was meant to be absolute fact (e.g. "Multi-track recording systems went from four to twenty-four tracks overnight").
I believe it was more a way of descibing that a sea change was occuring and it happenened rather quickly under-the-radar to the status quo.
Andy
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Bill Cahill
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| Posted: 17 January 2008 at 6:03am | IP Logged
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I once heard Cash Box described as "The Best Charts Money Can Buy".
That really referred to the later years when "The Letter" by Wayne Newton managed to hit number one. Really? Number One? I've never even heard it!
Then there's the year end charts with numbers missing.
Also a rumour that Billboard once put a bogus song at the bottom of the Top 100 to see if it showed up on Cashbox. The rumour says it did.
Of course Cash Box is the only magazine I know where somebody was convicted of MURDER over chart fixing.
I still treasure my out of print Cashbox chart book that Pat put out. I saw it on eBay recently for something like a hundred dollars!
I think Cashbox was reasonably accurate until the mid 80's until all charts went to hell as the 45 died.
Bill
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torcan
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| Posted: 17 January 2008 at 10:13am | IP Logged
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Bill Cahill wrote:
I think Cashbox was reasonably accurate until the mid 80's until all charts went to hell as the 45 died.
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What I found interesting was that the chart methodologies from Billboard and Cashbox in many ways mirroed each other.
One example: in the late '70s, Billboard seemed to institute a policy that nothing ever enters the chart in the bottom position (there were no entries at No. 100 on the Hot 100 between 1977 and 1988).
From the online charts I've seen from Cashbox, around 1980, their singles charts started doing that too. Could never figure out why they didn't want songs entering at the bottom.
Aside from that oddity, in looking at the rankings of the songs they weren't that much different from Billboard - so I guess they were pretty accurate at that time.
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Brian W.
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| Posted: 18 January 2008 at 3:51am | IP Logged
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torcan wrote:
in looking at the rankings of the songs they weren't that much different from Billboard - so I guess they were pretty accurate at that time.
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Mm, they were very similar, but there could be pretty big differences. Mr. Jaws made it to #1 in Cash Box, for example, as well as Record World.
What I like about Cash Box historically is that, according to Randy Price who compiled their archives online, it was completely sales based until sometime in the 1970s. Randy says that there was a note on each chart indicating this until at least early 1968. He speculates that they first started including airplay in the late '70s, since that's when their weekly "Greatest Gainer Airplay" award began.
I've combed '70s issues of the magazine at the library, looking for evidence of when they started incorporating airplay, but the only thing I could find is that their year-end charts continued to say they were "compiled from the Cash Box Top 100 Bestselling Singles chart" up through the 1974 year-end chart. Beginning in 1975, that was changed to simply, "the Cash Box Top 100 Singles chart."
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EdisonLite
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| Posted: 18 January 2008 at 9:57am | IP Logged
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<in the late '70s, Billboard seemed to institute a policy that nothing ever enters the chart in the bottom position>
Another trend I noticed is that they'd virtually never allow the #40 song to be a song that was falling down. I started listening to AT40 in 1977, and noticed that over and over again, #40 was a debut song (or a song that remained at #40 for a 2nd week), but only once in a blue moon would the show start with a song that was falling down! Very strange. Did anyone notice this? Does anyone know why Billboard would be concerned that AT40 NOT start with a dropping song?
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Topic: Editorial by Tommy James in Cash Box
